Leftovers

• Justin Vollmer ☛ Blogging Expectations

  Sometimes I ponder why I write blog posts. Is it for myself, as a way to process things? As a way to attempt to get engagement, and seek attention? As a way for friends and family (and future Justin) to see what is/was going on at any given date?

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Haircuts In Space: How To Keep Your Astronauts Looking Fresh

    Although we tend to see mostly the glorious and fun parts of hanging out in a space station, the human body will not cease to do its usual things, whether it involves the digestive system, or even something as mundane as the hair that sprouts from our heads. After all, we do not want our astronauts to return to Earth after a half-year stay in the ISS looking as if they got marooned on an uninhabited island. Introducing the onboard barbershop on the ISS, and the engineering behind making sure that after a decade the ISS doesn’t positively look like it got the 1970s shaggy wall carpet treatment.

  • Arduino ☛ This machine helps to experimentally find an estimation of absolute zero

    The experiment works by expanding gas as much as is feasible, reducing the average energy in any given volume and resulting in cooling…on average. If you’ve ever used canned air to clean a dirty keyboard, you’ve experienced that effect yourself.

    But Marb didn’t have a way to expand gas enough to get anywhere close to absolute zero. Instead, he needed a way to develop a mathematical function to estimate the value.

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ How ‘Sneakers’ Predicted Our Quantum Computing Future

    I was 16 when I first watched Sneakers on a VHS tape rented from my local video store. Between the popcorn and plot twists, I couldn’t have known that this heist caper would one day seem less like Hollywood fantasy and more like a prophetic warning about our future. Remember that totally unassuming “little black box” – just an answering machine, right? Except this one could crack any code. The device that sent Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and their ragtag crew on a wild adventure. Fast forward thirty years, and that movie gadget gives those of us in cybersecurity a serious case of déjà vu.

    Today, as quantum computing leaves the realm of theoretical physics and enters our practical reality, that fictional black box takes on new significance. What was once movie magic now represents an approaching inflection point in security – a moment when quantum algorithms like Shor’s might render our most trusted encryption methods as vulnerable as a simple padlock to a locksmith.

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] How paranormal beliefs help people cope in uncertain times

• Career/Education

  • Namanyay Goel ☛ Infantilization at Big Tech

    The first time I encountered Big Tech was at age 15 when I won Google Code In. They flew me and my family to San Francisco and showed us around the Googleplex. I arrived with wide eyes, eager to see where the “smartest people in the world” worked.

    But, what I found… disturbed me.

    Everyone wore the same badges, slept in nap pods, played the same games, and ate at the same cafeterias. I couldn’t escape the realization that I was looking at a daycare for adults.

    That day, I silently promised myself I would never work in such an environment.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Jeremy Keith

    This is the 86th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Jeremy Keith and his blog, adactio.com

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Visa cancellations sow panic for international students

    The visas were revoked with little notice. The students say, to their knowledge, they have not committed deportable offenses.

  • Robert Birming ☛ The hidden purpose of challenges

    I was recently listening to an insightful interview with the wonderful Finnish singer, Arja Saijonmaa. The conversation revolved around a topic we can all relate to: life's inevitable setbacks.

  • Fight For The Human ☛ Why I Cannot Be Technical

    One of the psychology professors who first inducted me into the field gave me advice about studying things. He was a very dialectical thinker: everything for him had to be understood in pairs, like Noah’s Ark. I was hanging around after class because I was a teacher’s pet kind of college student. But hanging out with authority is a way you can pick up the actual rules as people drop them, the actual game. It’s like if you stay in your seat at a theater while everyone else leaves and wait for the lights to come on so you can see the seams in the backgrounds and the faces of the people cleaning to whom this is just another day at their job. The actual game is also what I am listening for when I’m listening to Technical people explain things to me. At any rate, this faculty member said, “Everything worth studying has an opposite that’s necessary to understand what you thought you were studying.”

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New Statesman ☛ The cult of Luigi Mangione

    We should be chilled by Mangione’s alleged actions – but also by the nihilism in American society that drove him.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ States that enshrined Medicaid expansion in their constitutions could be in a bind

    If Congress goes that route, states would have to come up with $626 billion over the next decade to keep the roughly 20 million people in the expansion population on the rolls.

    Nine states (Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia) already have laws on the books that would automatically roll back Medicaid expansion if the federal funds dip. Some states are considering requiring people to work, go to school or volunteer in order to receive Medicaid benefits, a condition that would trim the rolls and save money.

    But because Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota have put Medicaid expansion in their constitutions, they can’t easily take those steps.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Trump has canceled environmental justice grants. Here’s what communities are losing.

    “I don’t know how we’ve come to demonize the idea that people deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water and have access to environments that are non-polluting,” said Diana Hernandez, associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “It’s a big loss, and it’s destabilizing.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Fitness coach says 'being fit after 40 bigger status symbol than owning expensive car', shares his 6 health cheat codes

    He added that regular exercise and a balanced lifestyle help combat age-related health issues, saying, “The heart attack at 50 began at 20. The Alzheimer's at 7 started at 40. the loss of independence at 80 began at 30. The key to ageing powerfully begins with the choices you make today. Once you hit 40, you start to see the age of two types of people: those who took care of themselves, and those who didn't... something I noticed in my 40s is how fast people age when they don't take care of their bodies.”

  • Michael Burkhardt ☛ Yes We Can

    Mangione sticker spotted in Berne, Switzerland

• Proprietary

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Returning to macOS After 20+ Years on Windows

    One big reason: the user interface congruity between macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.

  • Mathieu Aumont ☛ Distributed objects storage solution - StorJ Review

    Data is stored with now commonly used (but state of the art) concepts. Nothing disruptif on the tech, this is Erasure Coding + Distributed Hastable.

    The only disruptive element, compared to a traditional Cloud provider, is that anyone can participate in the network and set up a node to help expand capacit.

  • Eliseo Martelli ☛ OCLP on my parent's Mac mini: a failure story

    After hours of trial and error, countless reboots, and an ever-growing sense of despair, I finally admitted defeat. As I type this, I'm reinstalling macOS Monterey, defeated, because I was unable to change my mother's profile picture.

  • Trail of Bits ☛ Mitigating ELUSIVE COMET Zoom remote control attacks - The Trail of Bits Blog

    This post details our encounter with ELUSIVE COMET, explains their attack methodology targeting the Zoom remote control feature, and provides concrete defensive measures organizations can implement to protect themselves.

  • Security Week ☛ Fresh Windows NTLM Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks

    Tracked as CVE-2025-24054 (CVSS score of 6.5) and resolved on March 2025 Patch Tuesday, the medium-severity flaw could allow NTLM hash disclosure, enabling attackers to perform spoofing attacks over a network.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • 404 Media ☛ AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW)

      We're excited to share audio and video of our panel at SXSW, where Jason, Sam, and our friend Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media, and what we can do to fight back against it.

    • Drew Breunig ☛ What We Mean When We Say “Think”

      But how exactly did these models learn to “reason”? What do we mean when we say, “think”? Why do reasoning models excel at coding and math, but struggle to show improvements when venturing beyond these domains?

      Today let’s look at how we arrived at reasoning models, review how they’re built, and examine their impact on the ecosystem.

      Like everything else in AI, reasoning models aren’t magic. They just haven’t been clearly explained.

    • Chris Done ☛ LLMs

      I’ve been collecting thoughts on LLMs in a peacemeal way. I add to this document from time to time. It’s not an article as such.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ ‘Reasoning’ AI is LYING to you! — or maybe it’s just hallucinating again

      Given this, it’s no surprise that when you ask a “reasoning” model to explain its reasoning steps, it just generates something that looks like a list of reasoning steps — and not necessarily anything it actually used.

    • 9to5Mac ☛ Meta blocks Apple Intelligence on Facebook and its other iOS apps

      Apple Intelligence was announced with iOS 18 and has been available since last October, when Apple released iOS 18.1 to the public. Although most apps provide support for Apple Intelligence features by default, developers can choose not to have them in their apps – and it seems that Meta has decided to do so.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Tech bro's "AI" was just Filipino workers

      Saniger, who earned an MBA at London Business School and worked at Amazon, managed to squeeze $40 million from venture capitalists by selling them on his "proprietary AI technology," but the only thing proprietary about it was how creatively he hid the human workforce from his own employees.

  • Social Control Media

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Chinese TikTok's Reveal How 'Luxury' Brands Charge Thousands for Factory-Produced Goods Worth £30

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Funeral Held in Kenya for TikTok Content Moderator Following Death in Unclear Circumstances

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Zwolle man accused of online sex abuse of 34 young girls recruited on TikTok, Snapchat

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] TikTok's Of China Exposing Luxury Brands Go Viral Driving DHgate to Top of US App Charts

    • Vox ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] How an influencer’s weight loss triggered an internet meltdown

    • Stefano Marinelli ☛ Why I'm Expanding My Blogging Presence

      Looking back, years ago I used to use my blog just like it was a social network. I wrote about experiences, ideas, opinions. People would comment, creating an exchange. There were fewer haters back then — and when the phenomenon began to increase, we joked saying that "they'd sold too many modems."

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Airport retailer agrees to $6.9 million settlement over ransomware data breach

      The attackers accessed the company’s administrative system over five days in October 2020. The REvil ransomware group reportedly claimed to be behind the incident. Paradies Shops sent out notifications to data breach victims eight months later, as well as notices to state attorneys general.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ New DOGE CIO looks to reduce Labor IT office by 30%, agency source says

      The Labor Department’s new chief information officer is looking to reduce staff in the Office of the CIO by about 30%, according to a source within the agency.

• Security

  • Hackaday ☛ This Week In Security: No More CVEs, 4chan, And Recall Returns

    The sky is falling. Or more specifically, it was about to fall, according to the security community this week. The MITRE Corporation came within a hair’s breadth of running out of its contract to maintain the CVE database. And admittedly, it would be a bad thing if we suddenly lost updates to the central CVE database. What’s particularly interesting is how we knew about this possibility at all. An April 15 letter sent to the CVE board warned that the specific contract that funds MITRE’s CVE and CWE work was due to expire on the 16th. This was not an official release, and it’s not clear exactly how this document was leaked.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • DomainTools ☛ The Role of Domain and DNS Intelligence in Fighting Online Threats

      While online platforms do take action to prevent potential nefarious acts, brands can also defend themselves using domain and DNS intelligence to help protect themselves from spoofed websites as well as potential credential harvesting.

      This is important for all industries to understand as consumer fraud facilitated by the Internet touches more than the retail sector as retail extends to other industries like financial services and technology. Proactive threat detection can benefit all sectors to help mitigate risks before they occur.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Google makes Gemini Advanced free for US college students

      The company said Gemini Advanced, including Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas and video generation products, will be free for college students. Gemini will be enabled in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, and Google's experimental image and video generation tool Whisk will also be available, the tech giant said in a blog post.

    • Federal News Network ☛ TSA tests out AI to train, assist airport screening officers

      DHS has been aggressive in exploring the use of AI across the department, but current policy forbids DHS employees from entering anything more than information that’s already public into commercial generative AI platforms.

    • The Register UK ☛ Dems fret over DOGE [sic] feeding sensitive data into random AI

      Led by Representatives Don Beyer (D-VA), Mike Levin (D-CA), and Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), the Dems wrote a stern letter to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), saying that DOGE [sic]'s reported use of AI runs afoul of several federal laws and the OMB's own AI directives, and is unlikely to be in compliance with FedRAMP standards for cloud software security.

    • Wired ☛ ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform

      Palantir has been an ICE contractor since 2011, but the document published Thursday indicates that Palantir wants to provide brand-new capabilities to ICE. The agency currently does not have any publicly known tools for tracking self-deportation in near real-time. The agency does have a tool for tracking self-reported deportations, but Thursday’s document, which was first reported by Business Insider, does not say to what degree this new tool may rely on self-reported data. ICE also has “insufficient technology” to detect people overstaying their visas, according to the Department of Homeland Security. This is particularly due to challenges in collecting "biographic and biometric" data from departing travelers, especially if they leave over land, according to Customs and Border Protection.

    • The Verge ☛ Cops can’t do cell tower mass surveillance ‘dumps,’ court rules

      With tower dumps, authorities can dig through the cell records that pinged off a particular tower during a specific time. Though police may be looking for just one record, these dumps often expose the data of thousands of people, making it a major privacy concern. In a 2010 case involving the High Country Bandits, for example, officers caught the two bank robbers by looking through a tower dump containing more than 150,000 phone numbers.

    • The Verge ☛ DOGE [sic] is reportedly building a ‘master database’ of government information

      Connolly cited testimony from SSA whistleblowers who witnessed DOGE [sic] engineers accessing the agency’s IT system with “backpacks full of laptops, each with access to different agency systems”, with the aim of combining them into one database. Connolly warned that not only would such a database pose a threat to government cybersecurity, which siloes its information across several agencies to prevent cyberattacks from accessing all information at once, it was also very likely violating several privacy laws.

    • PC World ☛ Discord is making some users verify their age using face and ID scans

      The verification process involves either scanning your face with a webcam or visiting a QR code with your mobile device and uploading a photo of your ID card. This is a one-time verification, with options to re-verify or undergo a manual review if the process fails. Users who are deemed too young by the automatic verification could end up being banned.

    • India Times ☛ US judge limits Elon Musk's DOGE [sic] access to social security data

      The order by District Judge Ellen Hollander bans DOGE [sic] staff from accessing data containing information that could personally identify Americans, such as their social security number, medical history or bank records.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Federal judge in Baltimore temporarily limits DOGE [sic] access to Social Security data

      U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander issued a preliminary injunction in the case, which was brought by a group of labor unions and retirees who allege DOGE [sic]’s recent actions violate privacy laws and present massive information security risks. Hollander had previously issued a temporary restraining order.

      The injunction does allow DOGE [sic] staffers to access data that’s been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable, if they undergo training and background checks.

    • JURIST ☛ US federal judge continues restrictions on DOGE [sic] access to social security data

      The preliminary injunction comes after Judge Ellen Hollander granted a temporary restraining order on March 20, which temporarily restricted DOGE [sic]’s access to the personally identifying data from the SSA. In the 137-page temporary restraining order, Hollander stated that labor unions who brought the suit against DOGE [sic] were likely to succeed on their challenge that DOGE [sic]’s access to this personally identifiable information violated the Privacy Act.

    • Axios ☛ Scoop: Democrats seek probe of DOGE [sic]'s Social Security meddling

      Driving the news: House Oversight Committee ranking member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), in a letter first obtained by Axios, cited new whistleblower allegations that DOGE [sic] is "putting SSA benefits and Americans' sensitive data at risk," including by: [...]

    • Techdirt ☛ Florida’s New Social Media Bill Says The Quiet Part Out Loud And Demands An Encryption Backdoor

      Encryption is the best tool we have to protect our communication online. It’s just as important for young people as it is for everyone else, and the idea that Florida can “protect” minors by making them less safe is dangerous and dumb.

      The bill is not only privacy-invasive, it’s also asking for the impossible. As breaches like Salt Typhoon demonstrate, you cannot provide a backdoor for just the “good guys,” and you certainly cannot do so for just a subset of users under a specific age. After all, minors are likely speaking to their parents and other family members and friends, and they deserve the same sorts of privacy for those conversations as anyone else. Whether social media companies provide “a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption” or choose not to provide end-to-end encryption to minors at all, there’s no way that doesn’t harm the privacy of everyone.

  • Confidentiality

    • Security Week ☛ The Shadow AI Surge: Study Finds 50% of Workers Use Unapproved AI Tools

      It is frictionless, says Michael Marriott, VP of marketing at Harmonic Security. “Using AI at work feels like second nature for many knowledge workers now. Whether it’s summarizing meeting notes, drafting customer emails, exploring code, or creating content, employees are moving fast.” If the official tools aren’t easy to access or if they feel too locked down, they’ll use whatever’s available which is often via an open tab on their browser.

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Crypto agility isn’t a checkbox—it’s an operational mindset.

      Coincidentally, NIST has since released an initial public draft titled Considerations for Achieving Crypto Agility (CSWP 39 ipd, March 5, 2025), available here. In it, they define:

      “Cryptographic (crypto) agility refers to the capabilities needed to replace and adapt cryptographic algorithms in protocols, applications, software, hardware, and infrastructures without interrupting the flow of a running system in order to achieve resiliency.”

      That definition aligns almost perfectly with what I’ve been advocating for years—only now it carries NIST’s authority.

• Defence/Aggression

  • FAIR ☛ Khury Petersen-Smith on Yemen Distortions

  • FAIR ☛ Lab Leak: The Official Conspiracy Theory That Still Gets You Credit as a Free Thinker

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/15/25), former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who previously headed the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, asserted that “Wuhan lab’s risky gain-of-function research was a giant mistake that cost millions of lives.” He offered as evidence that “Western intelligence agencies” who “initially bowed to political pressure and rejected the theory that Covid emerged from the Wuhan lab…now favor that view, and most Americans agree.”

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Armenia’s geopolitical awakening: a democracy caught between empires

    This is not just Armenia’s story. It is the story of what happens when the old rules no longer apply, and no one comes to help you.

  • [Old] US Navy ☛ Barbary Wars

    During the 17th and 18th centuries, state-sanctioned pirates from the Barbary States (Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers) would seize unprotected merchant ships off the coast of North Africa and demand ransoms from the crews’ families and governments. The general practice at the time was to simply pay “tributes” to the pirates for safe passage in the Mediterranean instead of confronting them militarily. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that formally ended the American Revolution, the United States hoped it would enter a new era of global free trade. However, without the protection of the powerful British Royal Navy, American merchants quickly found themselves defenseless against Barbary pirates. At the time, the high seas were the most economically viable way to transport goods and the Mediterranean was vital to American prosperity. Presidents George Washington and John Adams chose to pay tributes to the Barbary pirates, but the bribes failed to ensure full protection and were subject to the shifting mmods of the bashaw of Tripoli, the bey of Tunis, the sultan of Morocco, and the dey of Algiers. With ransom amounts escalating, newly elected President Thomas Jefferson sent America’s reestablished Navy to confront the Barbary powers. In 1815, President James Madison sent a naval force to the Mediterranean to finish what Jefferson had started, and finally put an end to the Barbary States' threats toward American merchants.

  • [Old] Thomas Jefferson Foundation ☛ First Barbary War | Monticello

    The offer of an equal treaty did not work elsewhere in Barbary. Algiers was much more dependent than Morocco on the fruits of corsairing — captured goods, slaves, the ransoms they brought, and tribute — and was less amenable to a peace treaty with the United States. While planning the Barbary missions the American Commissioners had learned that two American ships — the Maria and the Dauphin — had been captured by Algerine corsairs. As a result, Lamb was instructed to negotiate ransom for the captives in Algiers as well as a peace treaty to prevent further attacks on American vessels. This plan proved impossible with the limited budget Congress had approved.[11]

  • Harvard University ☛ Slave trade database moving to Harvard

    The project’s website, launched in 2008 at Emory University, brings data to life with rich visualizations. A time-lapse animation tracks each of the individual voyages on a map of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A pair of 18th-century French slaving ships, both bound for present-day Haiti, have been recreated in 3D video based on surviving drawings.

  • Archive Today ☛ The Rich Are Hoarding Wealth — Because They Know What’s Coming

    Let’s cut through the noise: the ultra-wealthy are not just accumulating wealth; they are hoarding it, stockpiling fortunes at a rate so obscene it makes the concept of money itself feel ridiculous. While the rest of us get lectured on cutting back — drive less, eat less meat, recycle, make do with less — they are securing their bunkers, buying up remote islands, and building escape plans for the very collapse they are accelerating.

  • Daniel Pipes ☛ As Confrontation with Iran Approaches, the Abraham Accords Still Stand

    Al-Ayyam: In Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become more repressive than ever, yet the West turns a blind eye; please comment.

    DP: Politics often requires compromises and the West's near-silence on the increasing oppression in Türkiye offers a textbook example of this reality. I do not see this as hypocrisy but as the way of the world; governments owe first priority to their citizens' interests, which in this case means keeping Ankara on-side in the Ukraine war. Many, including myself, wish this were not the case. But, whatever the foreign involvement may be, only Turks, not outsiders, can end Erdoğan's dictatorship.

  • The Atlantic ☛ A Loophole That Would Swallow the Constitution

    Donald Trump’s most frightening power grab was undertaken with an undertone of sinister jocularity. There was no column of tanks in the streets, no burning of the legislature. The president and his partner in despotism, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, were bantering amiably in the Oval Office in front of the press corps, mocking the American court system with evident delight.

  • Mike Brock ☛ 20 Simple Truths About America

    These truths are not radical. They are foundational. They are what we have always claimed to stand for. To abandon them now is not just a political mistake. It is a moral failure. And we cannot afford that.

    Not now. Not with this much on the line.

  • Mike Brock ☛ 20 Simple Truths About America: Thursday at the Circus

    I started by returning to what I called “20 Simple Truths About America”—truths that shouldn’t be controversial but have become contested. That the president cannot defy the Supreme Court. That officers of the executive branch must obey court orders. That the Constitution is binding law. That the separation of powers isn’t a technicality. These aren’t opinions. They’re the operating instructions for the republic.

    But more than that, I tried to draw attention to the deeper problem we face: the epistemic crisis that has enabled our constitutional crisis. We live in a country where a significant portion of our fellow citizens no longer share the same reality. Some of them are trapped in a media ecosystem designed to cut them off from truth, to weaponize their emotions, and to sever them from democratic norms. They are not merely misinformed. They are psychologically captured. And yes, I said it: that is a form of evil.

  • BoingBoing ☛ GOP Senator admits fear of Trump 2.0: "We are all afraid" (video)

    "And I'll tell you, I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real," the lawmaker confided, referring to Donald Trump's thuggish and vindictive attacks on anyone who even questions his lawless ways. "And that's not right."

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ ‘Allah sees everything’: Gaza groups tell Muslims who to vote for

    The video was condemned by Kemi Badenoch on Wednesday night as “evil Islamist sectarianism” that had no place in the UK.

    The reference to Allah risks raising concerns that voters are being subjected to “undue spiritual interference”, a criminal offence under electoral law.

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] New UK system to protect satellites against attack shows how global conflict has spilled into outer space

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russia warns Germany against giving Ukraine Taurus missiles

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russia: Why Kremlin no longer considers Taliban terrorists

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] A Russian Bucket Brigade Helps Toads and Frogs Cross the Road to Get to a Spawning Site

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Finland Probing Russia Sanctions Breach Over Nuclear Plant Construction

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Former Top Russian Military Official Gets 7 Years in Penal Colony for Taking Bribes

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill Three in Ukraine's South, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russian Contacts With Witkoff Are Very Productive, Putin Envoy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russia Removes Afghan Taliban From List of Banned Terrorist Groups

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russia Says New Estonian Legislation Threatens Baltic Shipping Security

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Russia Using New Mass Assault Tactics on Battlefield, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Wealth of Russia's Richest People Rises to Record $625.5 Billion

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Russia Has Reduced Strikes on Energy, but Hitting Civilian Infrastructure Instead

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Has Evidence of China Supplying Russia With Artillery

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Danish soldiers to train in Ukraine, TV 2 reports – Russia reacts strongly

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Dutton admits mistake over comment on Russia's reported Indonesia plans

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] ‘I was wrong’: Coalition frontbencher apologises for saying Russia and China want Labor to win election

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Federal election 2025 as it happened: Dutton, Albanese hold second leaders debate; Russian plans to house aircraft in Indonesia ‘not true’ says Marles

    • The Local SE ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Sweden condemns Russian attacks on Ukraine's cities and civilian population

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Russian Drone Attack on Odesa Damages Homes, Civilian Infrastructure, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Finland to Keep Russia Border Closed Until Further Notice

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Russian Glide Bombs and Artillery Strike a Ukrainian City, Killing 1

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Russia Says It Repelled Drone Attack on Region Hosting Brigade Ukraine Accuses of Deadly Strike

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] What Happens When Russian and Ukrainian Soldiers Come Home?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Russia jails former DW journalists over Navalny ties

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia says 1 killed in Kursk drone strike

    • The Age AU ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Defence minister responds to reports Russia wants to base aircraft in Indonesia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Series of Blasts Shake Russia's Kursk Near Ukrainian Border, Russian Telegram Channels Report

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Indonesia Dismisses Report of Russian Request to Base Aircraft in Papua

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Italian Minister Blames Russia for Ukraine Truce Failures; Criticises Israel

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Kremlin Says There Is No Outline Yet for US-Russia Deal on Ukraine, but Political Will Is There

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Russia Jails Soldier for 15 Years for Voluntarily Surrendering to Ukraine, Kommersant Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Russia Says It Is Not Easy to Agree Ukraine Peace Deal With US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Russia's Spy Chief Says Russia, Belarus Ready to Act Over European 'Escalation' Around Ukraine

    • Vox ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] One unexpected side effect of Cheeto Mussolini’s tariffs

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Netherlands condemns Russian attack on Ukrainian city Sumy; "Horrible," PM Schoof says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Germany's Merz says Sumy attack 'war crime' by Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Ukraine: Cheeto Mussolini calls Russia's Sumy attack 'horrible'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] EU Plan to End Russian Oil and Gas Imports Due Out in May

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Russia Claims Its Deadly Attack on Ukraine's Sumy Targeted Military Forces as Condemnation Grows

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] EU's Kallas Says EU Working on 17th Package of Russia Sanctions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] German Court to Review Seizure of Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-U.S. Meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Russia's Attacks Spark Petrol Station Fire, Injure Several in Ukraine, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Russia Says It Hit Ukrainian Soldiers in Sumy, Kyiv Says It Deliberately Struck Civilians

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Syrian Ambassador to Moscow Requests Asylum in Russia, TASS Reports

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-13 [Older] Ukraine says 32 killed in Russian ballistic missile strike on Sumy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-13 [Older] Ukraine: More than 30 killed in Russian strike on Sumy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-13 [Older] Ukraine Says 32 Killed by Russian Ballistic Missile Strike on Sumy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-13 [Older] More Than 30 People Killed, 84 Injured in Russian Missile Attack on Ukrainian City of Sumy

    • ANF News ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] DEM Party delegation concludes talks in Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russia launches aerial assault on Ukraine, injuring 4

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russia Accuses Ukraine of Attacking Its Energy Infrastructure Five Times in Past 24 Hours

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Accuse Each Other of Failing to Pause Strikes After US Envoy Leaves Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russia Launches Scores of Drones on Ukraine, Four People Injured, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russian Guided Bomb Injures Four in Ukraine's Kupiansk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Russia's Lavrov Praises Cheeto Mussolini's Understanding of Ukraine Conflict

    • ANF News ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] DEM Party delegation meets with Russian deputy foreign ministers

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] How will US President Cheeto Mussolini and Russia's Putin shape Germany foreign policy?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] Russia Designates Yeltsin-Era Foreign Minister Turned Putin Critic a 'Foreign Agent'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Envoy's Embrace of Russian Demands Worries Republicans, U.S. Allies

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Ukraine updates: Ministers meet EU, US officials in Paris

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-17 [Older] Memorandum on Ukraine-US Minerals Deal Could Be Signed Thursday, Zelenskiy Says

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Danish military says plans for soldiers to attend courses in Ukraine are unconfirmed

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Putin and Qatar's Emir to Discuss Ukraine and Middle East

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] Ukraine's Parliament Extends Martial Law Until August

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-16 [Older] US Lowers Ukraine Aid Estimate in Minerals Deal Talks, Bloomberg News Reports

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Ukraine just suffered its deadliest attack on civilians this year. Experts say it's part of a grim trend

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] Ukraine: NATO chief in Odesa vows 'unwavering' support

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] War in Ukraine: Has Sumy attack destroyed all hope of peace?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-15 [Older] In the Ukrainian City of Sumy, Life Goes on Despite the Constant Threat of Attack

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Britain Sends Ukraine Second Part of $3 Billion War Loan

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Kremlin Says Tough Line From Merz on Ukraine Risks Escalating War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-14 [Older] Putin Is 'Mocking' Cheeto Mussolini's Goodwill With Ukraine Attacks, Poland Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-13 [Older] Kremlin Says Instant Results Not Possible After Cheeto Mussolini Demands Ukraine Progress

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Ukraine: What's up with Europe's largest lithium deposits

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-12 [Older] Ukraine Seeking Solutions for Damaged Chernobyl Confinement Vessel, Minister Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] Germany announces fresh military aid to Ukraine

    • Truthdig ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Why a Temporary Ceasefire in Ukraine Is Pointless

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Treating Opposition to Trump as a Partisan Issue Guarantees Defeat

    After spending a few paragraphs obscuring the uncontested truth that Trump’s Administration admitted Abrego Garcia had been sent in error, NBC pitched this as a dispute among Democrats, this time invoking Gavin Newsom’s snotty comment.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ Roughly One-Sixth of Croplands Globally Polluted With Toxic Heavy Metals, Researchers Say

    Heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead are toxic at low concentrations, Jagannath Biswakarma, a senior research associate with the School of Earth Sciences and the Cabot Institute for the Environment at University of Bristol, wrote in The Conversation.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Large, Snake-Like Fish Are Invading the United States—and Authorities Want You to Kill Them

    In 2002, the species was found in American waters for the first time in Crofton, Maryland, likely having spread from the fish market or aquarium trades. Since then, it’s been spotted in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arkansas and beyond. In Missouri, the first northern snakehead turned up in 2019 in a ditch in the state’s southeastern region. Now, sightings of the fish in that area are reportedly on the rise.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ The Cybertruck Is Turning Into a Complete Disaster

      It's yet another sign Tesla's highly divisive pickup truck is turning out to be a major sore point for the carmaker. According to an eighth recall issued last month, Tesla has sold a mere 50,000 Cybertrucks since it went on sale in late 2023.

    • Business Insider ☛ Tesla Drops Cybertruck Production Targets, Moves Some Workers Off Line - Business Insider

      It has delivered fewer than 50,000 Cybertrucks, a March 20 recall filing said.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ This spa’s water is heated by bitcoin mining

      At first glance, the Bathhouse spa in Brooklyn looks not so different from other high-end spas. What sets it apart is out of sight: a closet full of cryptocurrency-­mining computers that not only generate bitcoins but also heat the spa’s pools, marble hammams, and showers.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ The obscure policy that financed many of the last decade’s riskiest energy investments is back

      Where CWIP comes in is in answering the question of when this money should be collected: during construction, or only after the project is “used and useful.”

    • Declan Chidlow ☛ Airports and Aeroplanes

      There are plenty of reasons someone might hate airports. Long lines, security checks, inflated prices, potential delays, general uncertainty, banished baggage, labyrinthine layouts, lethargic layovers, overstimulating noise, and a whole range of factors outside one’s control.

      As a general rule, nobody who is at an airport wishes to be at an airport. People working there would rather not be. People going on a holiday would much prefer to already be at their destination. Businesspeople would rather have already closed the deal or not be working at all.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-04-11 [Older] How insects and the smallest animals survive Antarctica

    • The Revelator ☛ Bird Bias? New Research Reveals ‘Drab’ Species Get…Less Research

  • Overpopulation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ India's elephant warning system tackles deadly conflict

      There are fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The majority are in India, with others in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

      The usually shy animals are coming into increasing contact with humans because of rapidly expanding settlements and growing forest disturbance, including mining operations for coal, iron ore, and bauxite.

      Mine operations in particular have been blamed for pushing elephants into areas of Chhattisgarh where they had not been seen for decades.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Insight Hungary ☛ US lifts sanctions on Antal Rogán

    The U.S. State Department has removed sanctions on Antal Rogán, a longtime aide to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Reuters reports. Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó of the decision during a call on Tuesday, according to a statement from spokesperson Tammy Bruce. Rogán had been placed on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list in January under the Biden administration for alleged corruption tied to his role overseeing Hungary’s distribution of public contracts.

    Rogán, who has run Orbán’s cabinet office since 2015 and helped lead Fidesz’s media and election strategies, has been a key figure in Hungary’s nationalist government. The decision to reverse the sanctions marks a shift in U.S.-Hungary relations, which had grown tense under President Biden amid concerns over democratic backsliding and Budapest’s ties to Moscow. 

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How the Constitution’s Framers Got It Wrong

    James Madison argued that politicians' ambition would lead them to uphold the separation of powers. Today congressmembers’ ambition seems to lead them to do the exact opposite: submitting to Trump and completely bargaining away their own power.

  • Spaceraccoon ☛ Cybersecurity (Anti)Patterns: Busywork Generators

    However, many security programmes fall into a common trap where promising security solutions end up creating more and more work, eventually consuming a majority of resources and attention. Eventually, this detracts from solving more important security problems as teams are distracted with sending chasers, filing (digital) paperwork, and handling waiver requests.

  • PC World ☛ Infamous site 4chan taken down by a hacker from rival community

    But 4chan isn’t the only of its kind. An anonymous user from a rival forum called soyjak.party claimed responsibility for the hack attack, and that claim was corroborated via leaked emails from 4chan administrators and moderators. Not only was 4chan taken down, but the site’s source code and user data were stolen and leaked, including user email addresses.

  • Interoperable Europe Portal ☛ openDesk 1.0: Lessons learned | Interoperable Europe Portal

    In light of the recent release of openDesk 1.0, OSOR sat down with Pamela Krosta-Hartl and Alexander Smolianitski of the team at ZenDiS to discuss this groundbreaking open source solution for public administrations. Our interview delves into the challenges, achievements, and future plans for this innovative platform.

    The Centre for Digital Sovereignty of the Public Administration (ZenDiS) is a competency and service centre whose mission is to strengthen the digital sovereignty of the federal and state governments as well as of local authorities in Germany. It supports public administration in reducing critical dependencies on individual IT providers, also by means of giving them easy access to modern, powerful, and scalable open-source solutions. ZenDiS bundles the requirements of the public sector and ensures that OS solutions are developed according to demand and can be operated reliably.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : A Digital Shield, Not a Sword: Understanding Zambia’s Cyber Law Beyond the Noise

    As Zambia steps confidently into a new era of digital advancement, the recently enacted Cyber Security and Cyber Crimes Act has become the subject of intense public debate, some of it misinformed, much of it politicized. While online narratives have painted the law as a tool for surveillance, the Government has issued a precise and measured response to restore factual clarity and public confidence.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • [Repeat] OpenRightsGroup ☛ Bad Ads: Targeted Disinformation, Division and Fraud on Meta’s Platforms

      This report lays out clear evidence of how Meta enables bad actors to use its targeted advertising system to manipulate elections, spread disinformation, fuel division, and facilitate fraud.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Bad Ads Targeted Disinformation, Division And Fraud On Meta’s Platforms [PDF]

      Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, sit at the intersection of the attention economy and surveillance capitalism. Meta’s business model is built on maximising user attention while tracking behaviours, interests and harvesting personal information. This surveillance is used to categorise people into ‘types’. Meta uses this profiling to sell the attention of these ‘types’ to would-be advertisers – a practice known as surveillance advertising.

      This report brings together existing and new evidence of how bad actors can and have used Meta’s targeted advertising system to access the attention of certain types of users with harmful adverts. These ‘bad ads’ seek to mislead, to divide, and to undermine democracy. Through a series of case studies, it shows how bad actors — from political campaigns to financial scammers — have used Meta’s profiling and ad-targeting tools to cause societal harm.

    • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Can We Trust Our Eyes Anymore? The Dark Side of Apple's New AI Clean Up Tool

      Smartphone photo editing apps have been around for more than a decade, but now, you don't need to download, pay for, or learn to use a new third-party app. If you have an eligible device, you can use these features directly in your smartphone's default photo app.

    • [Repeat] OpenRightsGroup ☛ New report: How Meta is monetising the migrant crisis

      Investigation is part of new report which examines how Meta’s surveillance advertising model enables vulnerable people to be targeted with disinformation, fraudulent ads and divisive content.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ After Fleeing The Taliban, Afghan Musicians In Pakistan Fear For Their Future As Deportation Looms

    When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021, they quickly banned music, declaring it un-Islamic.

    Musicians faced threats, raids, and the destruction of their instruments.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Zambia welcomes opportunity to clarify Cyber Security act

    The Government of the Republic of Zambia has taken note of the recent public advisory issued by the United States Embassy in Lusaka regarding Zambia’s Cyber Security Act No. 3 of 2025.

  • Hengaw Organization for Human Rights Hengaw Organization for Human Rights ☛ Kurdish actress Shohreh Ghamar sentenced to over 4.5 years in prison

    Shohreh Ghamar, a Kurdish film actress and Tehran resident, has been sentenced to 56 months (4 years and 8 months) in prison by the Islamic Republic of Iran's judiciary. Ghamar had previously been sentenced to 15 months for supporting the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising.

  • Techdirt ☛ White House Censoring Press Pool Reports, While Still Discriminating Against AP

    Since his second inauguration, the Trump administration has launched what may be the most aggressive, censorial attack on free speech in modern American history. While previous administrations have occasionally targeted specific speakers or types of speech, this administration is waging an unprecedented, multi-front war on nearly all forms of expression they disagree with. What makes this especially striking is that it’s happening in an era when First Amendment protections are supposedly at their strongest, and with an administration that keeps wrapping itself in the flag of free speech. And yet… here we are.

  • JURIST ☛ US Homeland Security orders Harvard to hand over international student-activists records

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday ordered Harvard University to give records on student visa holders’ “violent activities” by April 30, or risk losing Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification. DHS also canceled $2.7 million in grant funding, finding the school to be “unfit to be entrusted with taxpayer dollars.”

  • Semafor Inc ☛ The GOP’s Harvard alumni side with Trump

    Democrats who went to the school are calling the latest escalation unlawful. “President Trump’s attempt to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status is yet another dangerous power grab by an administration dead set on weaponizing the federal government to force Americans to bend to its will,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told Semafor.

  • Common Dreams ☛ ACLU Advises University General Counsels on Legal Limits on ICE’s Authority

    Amid the growing retaliatory crackdown against noncitizen students for their First Amendment-protected speech and advocacy, the open letter explains that colleges and universities are not violating the law by providing housing or services to noncitizen students, including students whose visas have been revoked by the government. It further advises institutions that they are legally able to refuse to comply with warrantless searches of non-public areas, like dorm rooms, by ICE agents.

  • France24 ☛ 'We aren't scared': Meet the Turkish students defying Erdogan - Focus

    The first trials of those arrested during recent anti-government protests in Turkey are expected to open this Friday. [...]

  • Axios ☛ Virginia state flag banned in Texas district over exposed breast - Axios Richmond

    The lesson notes that the state's seal and flag depict the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a "defeated tyrant," along with the state's motto, "Sic semper tyrannis."

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Reddit's Copyright Removals Drop to Multi-Year Low

    As the platform continued to grow into the $17 billion company that it is today, rightsholders started to pay attention to these discussions. Eight years ago, Reddit was asked to remove ‘just’ 4,352 pieces of content, but that increased to well over a million a few years later.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Bill giving governor power over Archives board passes Alabama Senate

    SB 5, sponsored by Sen. Chris Elliot, R-Josephine, would remove the board’s appointing authority and increase its membership by one, from 16 to 17 members. The governor would be the appointing authority for most seats, including members from each congressional district, with eight at-large appointments coming from the speaker, president pro tempore, and the minority leaders of the House and Senate.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New Yorker ☛ The Decline of Outside Magazine Is Also the End of a Vision of the Mountain West

    After its purchase by a tech entrepreneur, the publication is now a shadow of itself. A letter signed by its illustrious contributors says as much about a way of life as it does about the media industry.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban intelligence agents detain journalist Sayed Rashed Kashefi in Kabul

    Taliban intelligence agents detained Kashefi after he was summoned to the GDI’s Directorate of Media and Public Affairs under the pretext of retrieving his mobile phone, video recording camera, and voice recorder, which had been confiscated in mid-March by agents who suspected him of working with Afghan exiled media, according to a journalist who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal.

  • Techdirt ☛ White House Falsely Calls NPR, PBS A “Grift,” Moves To Cut Already Modest Funding In Latest Attack On Journalism And Informed Consensus

    So the U.S. version of “public broadcasting” is decidedly half assed. Yet it still gets endlessly demonized by the right wing as some sort of extremist concept. That happened again this week when the White House issued a statement full of lies about public broadcasting, calling NPR and PBS a “grift”: [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Papers Please ☛ No, the REAL-ID Act won’t stop “illegal aliens” from flying

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have planted a story with Fox News falsely claiming that enforcement of the REAL-ID Act of 2005 at airports will prevent “illegal aliens” from boarding domestic airline flights within the US:

    These DHS and TSA claims amplified by Fox News are false, in at least four respects:

    First, as we reminded Maine state legislators at a hearing in Augusta earlier this week, the REAL-ID Act does not impose an ID requirement for air travel or authorize the TSA to prevent anyone from flying or traveling by any other common carrier on the basis of whether they have ID or “compliant” ID — regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. The TSA has said only that as of May 7th, 2025, as has been the case for years, airline passengers with no ID or ID the TSA deems “unacceptable” will be subject to delay for “additional screening” (more intrusive searches). If the TSA were to start refusing passage to airline ticket holders without ID, it would be acting illegally.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Pakistan: Islamist mob beat Ahmadi man to death in Karachi

    The Islamists previously surrounded the place of worship of the persecuted religious minority.

    Ahmadiyya community spokesperson Amir Mahmood said a 47-year-old car workshop owner lost his life.

  • Dawn Media ☛ Ahmadi man lynched as TLP supporters storm worship place in Karachi’s Saddar: police

    He said that around 400 TLP supporters had gathered outside the community hall, which is situated near the mobile market, adding that the police were already deployed there in the wake of similar incidents in Shah Latif, Surjani and Khokhrapar areas of the metropolis.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Military families challenge Trump’s stricter federal voting rules

    And advocates say there are other ongoing efforts at the state level and in Congress that could also undermine the ability of service members and families, as well as overseas citizens, to vote absentee.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Trump administration estimates 50,000 federal employees will lose civil service protections

    A forthcoming proposed rule from Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will amend civil service regulations to allow career federal employees to be converted to a new “Schedule Policy/Career” classification. Employees moved into the new classification will be moved outside of merit system principles, making it possible for agencies to easily and quickly fire them.

  • Wired ☛ Judge Blocks DOGE [sic] From Laying Off 90 Percent of CFPB

    The Trump administration and DOGE [sic] tried to cut more than 1,400 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. An employee union and other groups are fighting to keep the regulator intact.

  • The Verge ☛ Judge pauses mass firing of consumer protection workers

    The administration has sought to eliminate high-level agency officials responsible for maintaining the privacy and security of sensitive information it’s collected over the years. A lawyer for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents CFPB employees, said in a sworn declaration that they learned “virtually everyone” in the agency’s privacy, security, and cybersecurity units were told their jobs would be eliminated.

  • ANF News ☛ Seven female artists banned from singing in Iran

    As a result of the investigation, it was reported that seven female artists were forced to sign a document prohibiting them from singing, attending women's meetings, playing musical instruments and engaging in artistic activities on digital media.

  • FSF ☛ US Social Security Administration reverses freedom-impeding identity verification policy

    The fact that social security beneficiaries no longer need to debate (for now) between choosing freedom and sometimes resource-demanding visits to an SSA office is a great victory and very much worth celebrating! This win gives us hope that we can accomplish a lot more when we work together. At the time that this article was published, the options for avoiding nonfree JavaScript are still limited when interacting with the SSA. Completing claims via phone service does respect freedom, but it doesn't always respect the valuable resource of time. Social security beneficiaries should have the choice to exercise their user freedom without sacrificing hours of their time and/or other resources. A free society should never compel you to accept nonfree software to access your social benefits. Until the SSA switches MSS to free JavaScript, a simple fact remains: a coerced choice is not a choice at all.

  • BoingBoing ☛ ICE enlists Palantir to track down people it wants gone

    According to a leaker in contact with 404 Media, Peter Thiel's spooky private intelligence company, Palantir Technologies, has taken on a significant role in assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with locating individuals destined for deportation. Given recent whimsical comments by President Trump, such deportation targets could include American citizens—'accidental' or otherwise.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ U.S. citizen released from jail after arrest under Florida’s new anti-immigration law

    After Riggans’ inspection of his Social Security card and birth certificate, which an advocate waved in the courtroom, the judge said she found no probable cause for the charge.

  • University of Michigan ☛ ‘It’s a systematic attack on every level’: UMich labor leaders discuss threats to higher education

    “The specific challenges that the universities face might be diverse, whether it comes from a fascist administration that wants to crush academic freedom or living in an incredibly under-resourced community,” Kosnoski said. “These are different, but the reactions by the (University) administration tend to be the same. They tend to have the same outlook, the same neoliberal, anti-democratic, anti-expertise reactions.”

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Harvie Wilkinson on Due Process

    Waiting less than a day, the conservative on the panel for the case, Harvie Wilkinson, wrote a scathing opinion rejecting Trump’s plea for help.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Who has time for due process these days?

    Closing out your anti-Constitutional screed with a typo is perfect.

  • Deseret News ☛ BYU grad student's visa revoked following fishing citation – Deseret News

    He is also concerned affected international students are not being offered opportunities to represent themselves and present their side of the story.

    “We’ve taken away due process, which is just so fundamentally unfair.”

  • Raw Story ☛ US-born citizen being held for ICE under Florida’s new anti-immigration law - Raw Story

    “In looking at it, and feeling it, and holding it up to the light, the court can clearly see the watermark to show that this is indeed an authentic document,” Riggans said.

    Based on her inspection of his birth certificate and Social Security card, Riggans said she found no probable cause for the charge. However, the state prosecutor insisted the court lacked jurisdiction over Lopez-Gomez’s release because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had formally asked the jail to hold him.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ 40 years of .com — from HOSTS.TXT to global infrastructure

    How time flies. Forty years ago, symbolics.com was registered as the first commercial domain in what was then a relatively new model of name-to-address mapping. Most of the Internet ran on the HOSTS.TXT file — a simple linear list of assigned IP addresses, host by host, and the name you wanted to use to find it. Domain names existed inside the UUCP framework, alongside simple unique labels (we were all still in transition from having to explicitly state how to forward messages between hosts), and also in email, with the worldwide selection of ISO two-letter codes to denote your local economy (notoriously at the time, the UK decided to select right-to-left order in domain names — a decision reversed after much confusion some time later as the Internet spread).

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ You'll take my personal files from my cold, dead hard drive. Here's how to save yours

    His prediction has, in many ways, proven accurate. File management is now a foreign concept to an entire generation of young tech users, and you have to be a special kind of nerdy to consume media without relying on streaming services. If someone emails you a Word document, you might be more annoyed than if they’d linked to a Google Doc.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs

    Synology's new Plus Series NAS systems, designed for small and medium enterprises and advanced home users, can no longer use non-Synology or non-certified hard drives and get the full feature set of their device. Instead, Synology customers will have to use the company's self-branded hard drives. While you can still use non-supported drives for storage, Hardwareluxx [machine translated] reports that you’ll lose several critical functions, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates. The company also restricts storage pools and provides limited or zero support for third-party drives.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Wired ☛ Meta’s Monopoly Made It a Fair-Weather Friend

  Here’s one explanation for this. Content from influencers, political activists, and faux news organizations is more profitable and keeps people on the service longer. Misinformation from a stranger is worth more to Meta than family updates and travel photos from friends. Those don’t usually go viral. That’s why, when Alison wrote about AI, he didn’t mean using it to find what your friends are saying but to connect you with creators who are posting to boost their own wallets, with the help of Facebook monetization. On the stand, Zuckerberg offered a different explanation for the change: People began sharing on messaging apps instead of social platforms. But could it be that the reason that they stopped sharing on Facebook was that all those toxic posts from strangers made the platform unpleasant?

• The Verge ☛ The government doesn’t understand Meta

  This week, I spent three days in a Washington, DC courtroom watching Mark Zuckerberg testify. He was there defending his company from being broken up by the Federal Trade Commission, which is seeking to unwind his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp on the grounds that they were anticompetitive. At times, he was made uncomfortable and challenged with evidence that he wanted to “neutralize” rivals. Primarily, what I observed was the FTC’s misunderstanding of how social media works.

• Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ The trial that can break Instagram and WhatsApp from Meta

  On Monday (14th), one of the most anticipated trials in recent times began, in which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accuses Meta of monopolizing the personal social networking market by blocking potential competitors through its billion-dollar acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. One possible remedy is the breakup of the company, restoring Instagram and WhatsApp as independent alternatives and rivals to Facebook.

  The US legal system, which follows a common law model, relies on precedents to guide judgments. In “sui generis” cases, there is considerable room for deliberation.

• The American Prospect ☛ The Government Has Already Won the Meta Case - The American Prospect

  There’s an old phrase popularized by Gary Reback, the attorney who sued Microsoft in that monopolization case a quarter-century ago: The trial is the remedy. Because Microsoft was under threat for stifling competing products, it had to back off and allow sites on the World Wide Web to flourish. Because Facebook is under threat for buying or burying competitors, it cannot possibly participate in the TikTok auction, or take the same approach at squashing competition. This form of self-regulation is maybe not the optimal approach, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s triggered by aggressive antitrust enforcement. Facebook is being watched, and it cannot be as cavalier about its efforts to monopolize markets.

  I don’t know how the trial is going to play out. There was no reason for Donald Trump to kill the trial now; if the FTC loses, he will never have needed to make a choice. There are two phases to monopolization cases like this, and even if Meta loses the first one, it will have another opportunity to convince Trump to be lenient on them before the remedy phase. The risk of politicized antitrust is still with us.

  But the trial has already yielded something. Meta as a company is less likely to maintain its vise grip on social networking. The fact that the trial went forward at all shows bipartisan interest in enforcement that will not be going away. A spotlight can be a powerful thing that companies find difficult to escape.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

  It's a lot easier to prove what a corporation did than it is to prove why they did it. What am I, a mind-reader? But imagine for a second that the corporation in the dock is a global multinational. Now, imagine that the majority of the voting shares in that company are held by one man, who has served as the company's CEO since the day he founded it, personally calling every important shot in the company's history.

  Now imagine that this founder/CEO, this accused monopolist, was an incorrigible blabbermouth, who communicated with his underlings almost exclusively in writing, and thus did he commit to immortal digital storage a stream – a torrent – of memos in which he explicitly confessed his guilt.

• [Repeat] New York Times ☛ At Meta Antitrust Trial, Sheryl Sandberg Testifies About Competition and Instagram Deal

  Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta, said in a landmark antitrust trial on Thursday that the social media giant faced strong competition and that it nurtured and grew Instagram after buying the app, countering accusations that the company illegally stifled rivals.

• JURIST ☛ US federal judge rules against Google advertising monopoly

  Judge Brinkema found Google liable under three counts including 1) monopolization of the publisher ad server market; 2) monopolization of the ad exchange market; and 3) unlawful tying of the company’s publisher ad server and ad exchange.

  The particular technology in the case includes software that the tech giant uses to assist with transactions between advertisers and online publishers who sell the ad space. Google was accused of holding a monopoly on this software and tying that monopoly to its stranglehold over several of the marketplaces that facilitate deals between advertisers and online publishers.

• Court Listener ☛ Order – #1411 in United States v. Google LLC (E.D. Va., 1:23-cv-00108)

  For the for the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion, Count III (monopolization of the advertiser ad network market) of the Amended Complaint is DISMISSED. ORDERED that within seven (7) days of the date of this Order the parties submit a joint proposed schedule for briefing and arguing their positions as to the remedies that should be imposed in light of the defendant have been found liable for monopolization of the publisher ad server market (Count I), monopolization of the ad exchange market (Count II), and unlawful tying of AdX and DFP (Count IV). Signed by District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema on 4/17/2025. (kgall) (Entered: 04/17/2025)

• India Times ☛ Google to appeal against part of US court's decision in monopoly case

  On Thursday U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google liable for "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power" in markets for publisher ad servers and ad exchanges.

• Free Law Project ☛ United States of America, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Google LLC, Defendant. 1:23-cv-108 (LMB/JFA)

  The federal government and seventeen states (“Plaintiffs”) have brought this antitrust action against Google LLC (“Google” or “Defendant”), in which they claim that Google has monopolized three digital advertising technology markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and has tied its products in these markets together in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

  With the benefit of a three-week bench trial and extensive post-trial filings, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to prove that there is a relevant market for open-web display advertiser ad networks, but have proven that Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market, and has unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX) in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Having found Google liable, the Court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine the appropriate remedies for these antitrust violations.

• The Register UK ☛ Google unfairly monopolized publisher ad world, judge rules

  In a 115-page memorandum opinion [PDF] published Thursday, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act "by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in the open-web display publisher ad server market and the open-web display ad exchange market, and has unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX)."

• New York Times ☛ Google Is Illegally Monopolizing Online Advertising Tech, Judge Rules

  It was the second time in a year that a U.S. court found that the company had acted illegally to remain dominant.

• New York Times ☛ Read the Antitrust Ruling Against Google

  Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the online technology ad industry, the court said.